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ADDRESS, JM 



OP THE 



V 



UNION LEAGUE OF PHILADELPHIA, 



TO THE • 



CITIZENS OF PENNSYLVANIA, 

WITH THE 

PREAMBLE AND RESOLUTIONS, 

Adopted in General Meeting, August ^Gth, 1SG8, 



Fellow-citizens :' 

Again you are called to the polls to defend the cause for which, since 
1860, 3'ou have shown your devotion in so many sacrifices. 

You doubtless thought, when the rebels laid down their arms and 
acknowledged themselves vanquished, that the struggle was over, and 
that all for which 3'ou had fought was secured. You may ask yourselves 
why, three years after a triumph so complete, 3'our exertions are still 
necessary to settle the questions which were apparently decided forever 
at Appomattox Court House ; and perhaps you feel dissatisfied that the 
country has not subsided into the peaceful quiet so earnestly desired by 
all good citizens. If so, you have erred, and still err, in regarding the 
rebellion as merelj'' the movement of a few unquiet spirits, who made 
skilful use of slavery as the means by which to gratify the longings of 
personal ambition. 

The rebellion was much more than this. It was the struggle between 
two opposite systems of society. On the one hand were the traditions 
of feudalism, of caste, of class privileges, the reaction against modern 
thought and liberty, which for three generations had moulded every 
institution, and had trained the people to one unvarying course of 
thought. On the other hand were the expansion of progress, belief in 
the dignity of labor, faith in the liberty of thought — in fine, the abso- 
lute right of every man to reason for himself and to carv§ out his own 
destiny. That systems so antagonistic should, sooner or later, measure 
their strength in deadly strife was inevitable. 

Human slavery was the most prominent bulwark of the Southern 
system, and it naturally became the ostensible cause of struggle. 
Naturally, also, it perished in the war which it had provoked, because 
it was the most assailable aud least defensible portion of the system. 
When we marked the downfall of that great iniquity, we shouted that 






our work was done, for we had given too little thought to all that lay 
behind slavery, that had fostered it, and had been fostered by it Nor 
had we yet sounded to its utmost depths the baseness of that faction, 
falsely styling itself Democratic, which, crazed with the lust of office, is 
ready to sell itself into bondage again to the masters whose rule had 
wrouglit such ruin to us all. 

No, our work is not y«t done, nor will it be done until Northern ideae 
shall have been penetrated throughout the South, and society there shall 
have reconstructed itself on the basis of true Democracy. When 
Abraham Lincoln said that the United States could not remain half 
slave and half free, he gave utterance only to a portion of a great truth. 
Our country must be homogeneous. One section of it cannot' be aristo- 
cratic, nursing sedulously the exploded notions of class privileges, and 
persecuting men because they labor for their daily bread, or because 
they entertain ideas repugnant to the dominant caste ; while the other 
section honors labor and the laborer, admits of no distinction between 
citizens, and grants the fullest toleration to every shade of opinion on 
every subject. One section cannot set up the State as the sovereign 
object of its allegiance, while the other admits of no rival to the Union 
in its claims upon the citizen. Yet now that slavery is legally dead, 
and secession has been nominally renounced, these differences between 
the North and the South exist as sharply as ever. Until they shall be 
removed, political strife must continue, as keen and eager as the strife 
lately hushed on the battle-field. The result must necessarily be that 
either Northern ideas must conquer the South, as Northern arms have 
already done, or that Southern ideas must accomplish what Southern 
arms so miserably failed in attempting. 

Enclosed as we are between two oceans, occupiers forever of the same 
land, this is the struggle which is set before us. We cannot shirk it. 
We cannot shun the necessity which is upon us. We may seek in cow 
ardly mood to shrink back from our appointed work, but we shall 
merely postpone the inevitable, and prolong the labor and the suffering. 
It is only by pressing forward, resolutely, but prudently and wisely, 
to do that which Providence has ordained us to do, that we can escape 
with the least amount of toil and loss. 

The burden of this task which lies before us has been immeasurabh* 
increased by the selfish stolidity and short-sighted recklessness of the 
Democratic party. Even as in' 1860-61 they invited their slaveholding 
allies into ruinous rebellion, so now, in the hope of' a temporary restora- 
tion to power, they are sedulously urging those same allies to resist 
afresh the inevitable course of events. Forgetful of the fearful record of 
the past, wilfully disregarding the irresistible developments of the future, 
they seek only to pander to popular passion in the present, and rest 
their hopes of success solely on their skill to work upon the meanest 
motives and prejudices of their dupes. 



r We would not judge them harslily, for they nve our fellow-countrymen. 

c* That the masses of the party are. honestly wishing to do their duty we 
c^dare not doubt, but they have surrendered themselves to leaders who 

- make sport of their honor, and sell them for the vilest price that ever 

6 freemen were bargained for. Who is there so hardened thnt his cheek 
did not tingle with shame when he learned that General Forrest of Ten- 
nessee, Forrest the negro-trader, Forrest the guerilla, Forrest the butcher 
of Fort Pillow, was a Democratic delegate to a National Convention as- 
sembled to frame a platform and to select candidates for whom men of 
the North are expected to vote ? Yet abject as is this degradation, they 
succeeded in reacliing a furtlier de))th, for this same Forrest was able to 
boast publicly on his return that four-fifths of the Northern Democrats 
whom he had met apologized to him for having opposed the South in 
her rebellion. When the Democratic party thus intrusts itself wholly 
to men who abjure their manhood, is it to be wondered at if they adopt 
a set of principles dictated to them by Wade Hampton, and present for 
vour suffrages men who are pledged to undo as far as possible all that 
ihe war has accomplished, even at the cost of another war? Or can we 
be surprised that the South, finding such facile allies, should eaji^erly re- 
vert to its old ideas, and should strive to make those ideas permanently 
triumphant as the guiding principles of the Republic ? 

In this we do not blame the South, for Southei'u men have been edu- 
cated in the beliefs to which they cling, and they, at least, are honest in 
their faith. That they are struggling for an obsolete theory of society is 
their misfortune, and while duty to the country and to millions yet un- 
born compels us to combat that theory as destructive to the well-bcintr 
of us all, yet for the men who conscientiously uphold it we would per- 
sonally entertain none b»t the kindest and most charitable feelings. It 
was the first act of the Government, after the surrender of Lee and John- 
son, to feed the starving masses of the Southern people, and that much 
maligned institution, the Freedmen's Bureau, has consistently dispensed 
its bounty without regard to the loyalty of the recipients. We have 
always rejoiced in these facts, and it is our pride to think that in all the 
movements to relieve the wants of the South, without distinction of race, 
color, or poMtical opinion, since the close of the war, the members of 
this League and of the party which it represents have ever been fore- 
most with active sympathy and substantial aid. Yet, while we would 
gladly assuage the calamities which they have brought upon themselves, 
we cannot but resist them to the death in their mad attempt to bring 
back a forgotten past. 

Whether they are to succeed in this will be determined at the Novem- 
ber election, in asserting this we are not theorizing, for the proof lies 
within reach of every man who can note and weigh the events that are 
passijig before his e3'es. As in wine there is truth, so in the excitement 
and enthusiasm of the South at the surrender of the Democracy in iSew 



York, the restraint of the last three years was swept away, aiifl the glad- 
ness of anticipated triurapii seemed ty render caution and reticence no 
longer necessary. When Governor Wise, at the R,icliniond ratification 
meeting, assured his hearers that secession was as much aUve as ever, he 
only crudely declared what Wade Hampton, the dictator of the Democratic 
platform, expressed more covertly at the Charleston meeting, in pledging 
his sword once more to his native State, and swearing that at her call he 
would hasten to her rescue from the uttermost bounds of the earth. 
Fresh from the meeting of the " National " Democracy, and planning a 
political campaign for the whole nation, he yet had no thought for the 
nation. His allegiance was confined to the petty borders of the sovereign 
State of South Carolina. No, secession is not yet dead, and the Mem- 
phis Ajypi^'al only gives form to the secret vows of the Southern Demo- 
crats when it bluntly declares that the South will ^'^et be independent. 

If secession is thus still rampant, the other old heresies are not less 
vigorous. The spirit of feudal o[)pression and class privilege, the con- 
tempt for honest labor and tlie determination to keep it in subjection, 
which Ibrmerly manifested themselves in slaveholding, were, when slavery 
was abolished, promptly reasserted in the black codes enacted through- 
out the South by Mr. Johnson's reconstructed legislatures. Now that 
these also have been swept away, the same sjjirit reveals itself in the 
schemes to control the negro vote and to render him the instrument of 
his o\n\ disfranchisement. Public speakers openly advise combined 
action to throw out of employment every man who does not vote the 
Democratic ticket, and associations are springing up everywhere pledged 
to carry out this policy in an organized manner It is characteristic of 
the party that men styling themselves Democrats should manifest such 
utter contempt for the lirst element of republican democracy 

Nor is the old intolerance, which placed a padlock on the lips of every 
man who did not think with the majority, one whit abated. Free thought 
and free speech— the vital breath of our institutions— are as obnoxious 
to the Southern mind to-day as when peaceful citizens were tarred and 
feathered for disbelieving in the Divine appointment of chattel bondage. 
All who frankly accept the results of the war, all men, whether Northern 
or Southern, who honestly believe that the South can be readjusted to 
the necessities of the new era, are denounced as unfit for human com- 
panionship ; they are to he placed under the ban, and exposed to in- 
genious persecution, until driven away in despair from a community 
which is obstinately determined to learn nothing and to forgot nothing. 

Still more portentous is the undiminished vigor of the old spirit of 
lawlessness — the spirit which taught that it was noble and chivalric to 
defy the law, and which ever sympathized with and protected the law- 
breaker. The peculiar boast of modern Anglo-Saxon civilization is the 
innate reverence for the sanctity of Law which enables vast communities 
to live with perfect safety to person and property, and without subjec- 



tion to the bayonet. Tt is this trainina; which ranges every citizen in^ 
stinctively against the law-breaker, and thus relieves us from the ruinous 
expense and demoralization of huge standing armies, and in this training 
the South is unfortunately more deficient than ever. Witness the hun- 
dred murders a month now occurring unpunished in Louisiana ; witness 
the nine hundred and thirty-nine homicides which have been perpetrated 
in Texas since the rebellion was suppressed, and for which but one mur- 
derer has been hanged ; witness the burning of negro schools and the 
lynching of negro teachers; witness the outrages of Ku Klux Klans, 
combining every element of grotesque ferocity. No one understood the 
power of this spirit better than General Blair, when, foreseeing that the 
South would control the Democratic Convention, he bid for its suppoi't 
by pledging himself to trample upon the laws of Congress, to coerce the 
Senate into submission, and to disperse by Ibrce the reconstructed gov- 
ernments of the Southern States. The artful bait was eagerly swallowed, 
and simultaneously every organ of Southern opinion appeals to force to 
carry the election, or to upset the election in case of defeat. Every 
disfranchised rebel is to vote, and if these illegal votes are refused, the 
bayonet is Invoked to compel their reception. Virginia is to vote, and 
Texas, and Mississippi, States not yet organized or recognized, and 
Congress is to be overawed itito counting their ballots in the Electoral 
College ; while, if these hopeful schemes fail in winning success for their 
revolutionary candidates, civil war is freely threatened as a last resort. 

We have no fears that this antiquated system of lawlessness, of op- 
pression, of aristocracy, and of secession, can win an ultimate and per- 
manent victory, for the spirit of the age is against it, and sooner or later 
it must go down and be buried with the kindred relics of now forgotten 
wrong and error Neither can we promise you that the success of the 
Republican party at the coming elections will at once elevate the South 
from darkness into light. We onl}^ know that, as sure as there is a God 
in heaven, progress and enlightenment and freedom must triumph in 
the end It rests with you to say whether this triumph shall be speedy 
and peaceful, or whether the struggle shall be prolonged and arduous, 
leading to convulsions .as fierce as those from which we have just 
emerged. The alliance between the Democracy and reaction is so 
thorough and cordial that the nomination of Seymour and Blair is every- 
where hailed at the South as the justification of the rebellion, and the 
bitterest rebels openly declare that in striving for the success of their 
candidates they are but continuing the battle for the lost cause — that 
they are fighting now for what they fought for from 1861 to 1865. 
Should they by any possibility of force or fraud carry the day, think 
what a dreary vista of anarchy and strife we shall have to traverse ere 
we can restore the country to even the measure of peace which we now 
enjoy 1 Exhausted as we are, and needing years of quiet industry to 
make good the losses and the ravages of war, four years of Democratic 



6 

misrule, under the guidance of Wade Hampton and Blair, would d4 
more for our prostration than was effected by the four years of thu 
rebellion. 

Nor can we flatter ourselves that the cautious selfishness of an intrigu- 
ing politician like Seymour would arrest the madness of those to whom 
he would owe his election. They would be his masters, for in times like 
those which would be upon us, negative natures must succumb to posi- 
tive ones. We should see our destinies intrusted to such men as Wade 
Hampton in the War Department, and Raphael Semmes at the head of 
our Navy. Should Seymour falter in the work, he would be made to feel 
that his safety depended upon his obedience, and if this were not 
sufficient, the men who are already invoking the dagger of Brutus and 
the shade of Wilkes Booth would not scruple to remove him that they 
might obtain the services of the reckless and unprincipled Blair. 

Whichever waj'- we turn, fellow-citizens, we therefore see that our only 
hope of safety lies in electing Grant by such a majorit}' as may show to 
Democrats and rebels that the American people intend to persevere in 
the path which they have entered ; that neither threats nor blandish- 
ments will turn them from their duty, and that they are irrevocably de- 
termined that tlie causes which led to the rebellion shall be forever 
removed from the nation. 

These are the main issues awaiting your decision, but scarcely second 
to them in tlieir influence on the well-being of the people are the questions 
connected with our national finances. Simple as the solution of these 
questions may be to common-sense honesty, it is in the power of dema- 
gogues so to complicate them, by tampering with tlie national credit, as to 
inflict incalculable injury on all the industrial and fiuaucial interests ol 
the country It is not on the bondholder that the chief loss would bo 
inflicted, for the Government credit is so inextricably intertwined in every 
transaction of daily life that every man is a creditor of the Government 
The poorest citizen, who has nothing but his labor to sell, can receive in 
exchange for his labor nothing but tokens of Government credit, and his 
all is dependent upon its maintenance. Moreover, the ruin of that credit 
would necessarily thus bring about a paralysis ruinous alike to the farmer 
and the mechanic, the merchant and the workingman ; and, while all would 
sufler, that sufi'ering would fall with peculiar hardship upon the industriouM 
poor whose daily labor is their only provision against want and starvation . 

Had it not been for the assaults already made upon the national credit, 
the problem would already be near its solution, for all that is required is 
a rigid adherence to plighted faith. Let the world once believe that our 
promises to pay will be honored without reservation or equivocation,' 
and those promises will speedily become equivalent to gold in the 
markets of the world ; and when once that point is reached, the 
questions which now rack the brains of political financiers disappear of 
themselves. Fortunately the utterances of the Chicago platform on this 



point are so clear and unmistakable that the indorsement of that plat- 
form by the people will at once smooth our path towards resumption of 
specie payments and the lightening of the public burdens ; while the 
dubious and threatening phrases of the Deraoci'atic profession of faith 
would render its triumph the source of the most disastrous complications. 
Strange that the hard-money Democracy of Jackson and Benton and 
Van Buren, should now be conspiring to inflict upon us the unimagin- 
able miseries of countless billions of hopelessly irredeemable paper I 

Such, fellow-citizens, are the mighty issues which you are now called 
upon to decide. As your votes are cast, so will be the future of our 
country With Grant you may enjoy peace, prosperity and progress ; 
with Seymour you can scarce hope to escape anarchy, desolation and 
long years of bitterest strife. 



PEEAMBLE A'ND EESOLUTIOI^S. 



Whereas, The policy proclaimed by the so-called Democratic party, 
in its platform and in the utterances of its candidates and repre- 
sentative leaders, is such as justly to create the profoundest alarm as to 
the future of our country ; and 

Whereas, In the perils to which are thus exposed all the great 
principles which this League was founded to support, it is proper that 
we should express our sense of the issues which are to be decided at the 
coming elections, and that we should use all honorable means to avert 
the dangers inseparable from a Democratic victory at the polls ; therefore, 

Resolved — 

I. That we see with the deepest sorrow the peace, won through the 
sacrifices of four years of war, imperilled by the action of reckless dema- 
gogues who are industriously laboring to rekindle the embers of rebel- 
lion. 

II. That as the Democratic party now seeks to reopen the questions 
which were settled by the war a^nd by the legislation consequent thereon, 
the endless strife with which they threaten us can only be avoided by 
the emphatic condemnation at the ballot-box of the lawless and revolu- 
tionary programme, for which they have the eilrontery to ask the fa\or 
of the people. 



8 

013 786 547 6 

III. That in Anew of the open alliance now acknowledged between the 

Denocracy and the Rebellion, it is the first duty of every citizen to spare 

no exertion to defeat that faction, which souglit in 1864 to force 

upon us a treasonable peace, and which now endeavors to destroy our 

glorious peace by threatening a treasonable war, consistent in nothing 

but' the insane desire to foster and protect treason and rebellion. 

lY. That we confidently^ look to the gallant men, who 'stood by the flag 
during long years of desperate war, for efficient aid in our efforts to defeat 
a platform dictated by the rebels whom they had conquered, and to pre- 
vent the success of candidates who pledge themselves to undo, in the 
cabinet, all that has been accomplished in the field. 

Y. That we echo the words of our great leader, " Let us have peace," 
as the expression of the end and aim of our political action, and that in 
no waj'^ can the blessings of a durable pacification be attained except by 
the triumphant election of him who was first in war, and whom we are 
resolved to make first in peace. 

YI. That the financial policy developed in the Chicago platform 
meets our warmest approbation ; that we denounce, with it, as a national 
crime, all the forms of repudiation, open or disguised, suggested bj' the 
Democratic Convention ; that we believe " the best policy to dinnnish 
our burden of debt is to improve our credit," so that a specie cu/re-ucy 
ma}^ be insensibly restored by the appreciation of the national securities ; 
and that the demagogues who are insidiously assailing the credit of the 
Govei-nment are the greatest enemies of the people whom they are seek 
iug to cajole. 

YJl. That the thanks of our citizens are due to our Eepres^-ntatives 
in Congress who have so gallantly resisted the encroachmei»^s of the 
Executive, and have, in the face of apparently insuperable iibstacles, 
wrought out a practicable plan of reconstruction, based upon the immu- 
table principles of the rights of man. 

YIII. Tiiat in the unexceptionable tickets, National, State, and Munici- 
pal, presented for the suffrages of the Republican party, we see an assured 
guarantee of our triumphant success, provided we do not throw away our 
ad'.antages through supineness and over-confidence. 

IX. That we would especially warn our friends to be vigilant and 
detcnuined to prevent a repetition of the enormous and bare-faced frauds 
by wliich the Democratic party last year gained an apparent victory iu 
our city and State. 

X. That a committee of fifty members of the League be appointed by 
the Chairman of this meeting, to give effect to the views expressed in the 
second of the above resolutions, and that the said committee have power 
to fill vacancies and to add to its number. 

Kinff & Saird, Printers, 607 Sansotn Street, PliUaaelphia. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



013 786 547 6 



